Author: Steve

It seems to me that my phone’s battery drains way too fast sometimes. I use it semi regularly throughout the day but still in the evening I’m at 15% when I think there’s no good reason for me to be. Fortunately, there’s an explainable reason this happens. Let’s first take a look at why the phone needs power:

Everything your phone does requires what’s called a process. A process is all the calculations and tasks the phone has to do in the background so that you can enjoy it the way it was meant to be used. Processes can build up quickly, especially if you’re like me, and you have a lot of apps on your phone that you switch between.

For instance, your phone is making sure you can receive calls; there’s a process for that. It is checking that the screen is at the correct brightness; there’s a process for that. It is looking out for new text messages or SnapChats or Facebook notifications or Instagram updates. They all require processes and they’re all running even when you lock the screen.

I have some tips that will allow your battery to remain as charged as possible:

1.Disable the fancy settings.

This is one of the easiest ways to increase battery life. Your phone came to you with all sorts of features that, on the surface, are fun to use and make your experience better. However, they all require processes that will eat away at your battery life. Fancy settings include but are not limited to:  Bluetooth, location services, auto-rotate, auto-brightness, NFC, Hey Siri/Ok Google, Gestures.

2. Lower the brightness.

I know, I know, you want to be able to see your screen in its most amazing clarity. But that requires power, unfortunately. Setting the screen to a low brightness when it’s dark in your surroundings will help you conserve power. The screen is the one of the most power-draining parts of the phone because of the energy required to light it up. If you can handle a dimly lit display, you’ll really reduce battery consumption.

3. Close apps not in use.

The apps you open throughout the day have an impact on battery life after you’re done using them. Try to remember to close all the apps frequently.

4. Uninstall apps you don’t use.

Some apps have 24/7 processes to check for notifications. SnapChat and Facebook are examples of these. If you have other apps like them that you simply don’t use anymore, uninstall them to make sure they aren’t draining power unnecessarily.

5. Keep a battery bank with you.

If all else fails, having a battery bank with you will allow you to charge your device on the go.

Congratulations! You’ve made a virtual box of your favorite linux distro. But now you want to download a picture of your cat and find out that you’ve run out of disk space. 
Image: habrahabr.ru

Rather than free up space by deleting the other pics of Snuffles, you decide you’d rather just make the virtual machine have more disk space. But you’ll find out quickly that Oracle has not made this super-easy to do. The process is not simple, but it can be if you just use the following steps:

Open the Command Line on your windows machine. (Open Start and type cmd)

You can then navigate to you vitualbox installation folder. It’s default location is C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\

Once there, type this command to resize the .vdi file:

VBoxmanage modified LOCATION –resize SIZE

Replace LOCATION with the absolute file path to your .vdi image (just drag the .vdi file from file explorer to you cmd window) and replace SIZE with the new size you want (measured in MB) 1 GB = 1000 MB

Now your .vdi is resized, but the disk space is unallocated in the virtual machine. You’ll need to resize it. To do this, download gparted live. Make a new virtual machine. It is going to simulate a live CD boot where you can modify your virtual partition.

If your filesystem is ext4, like mine was when I did this, you’ll need to delete the linux-swap file located in-between your partition and the unallocated space. Make sure you leave at least 4 GB of unallocated space so that you can add the linux-swap partition back later.

After you’ve resized your partition, you’ll be done. Boot into the virtual machine as normal and you’ll notice you have more space for Snuffles.

The Physical address of a device is an unchanging number/letter combination which identifies your device on a network. It is also referred to as a Media Access Control Address (MAC Address). You may need it if you’re having issues with the campus network and UMass IT wants to see if the network itself is the problem.

To find the MAC/Physical address on a Windows 10 device:

Right click on the Start button to make a menu appear:

Select Command Prompt from the menu.

In the window that appears, type “ipconfig /all” without the quotes:

The resulting text displays information about the parts in your computer which communicate with the network. You’ll want to find the one that says “WLAN adapter” and look under that heading for the Physical Address:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Find the MAC Address of a Apple/Macintosh computer:

Click the apple menu in the top left of the screen and click System Preferences:

In the window that appears, click “Network”:

Highlight WiFi on the left-hand side and click advanced:

Navigate to the Hardware tab to find your MAC address:

To Find the MAC address of an iPhone:

Use the Settings app, go to General>About and the MAC Address is listed as “WiFi Address”:

To find the MAC address of an Android device:

The location of the MAC address on an android device is unique to the device, but almost all versions will show it if you navigate to Settings>Wireless and Network; the MAC address will be listed on the same page or in the Advanced section:

You may also be able to find the MAC address in the “About Phone” section of the setting menu: